Our European Vacation

Over the Christmas holiday in 2007, Nancy and I toured Europe. I wrote a lengthy piece about our journey when we got back, which ran as a three-part series in the Star Beacon. I, being me, have lost both the computer file and the hard copy of that vacation saga, but I did find the the final two parts at starbeacon.com. The missing portion covered our time in Paris, where the sites included a view of the city from the Eiffel Tower, and an excellent view of a horde of bare-breasted women on the stage at the Moulin Rouge. From Paris we went to Lucerne. Franco was our tour guide, and Mario was our bus driver.

The next morning, before the sun came up we were on our way to Lucerne, Switzerland. It really wasn’t all that early, but on those short days near the solstice, the sun didn’t come up in Paris until almost 9 o’clock.

 We spent the day traveling through the countryside. The fields lined the highway, and, off in the distance, you could see the villages. From time to time, Franco would tell us about the region we were driving through, a little bit about its history, its people and what kind of wine it was famous for.

 Almost everywhere there was frost. At times, it was like driving through a world of crystal. In a few places, the frost was so thick a couple of Australians mistook it for snow.

 On Christmas morning, we took a brief bus tour of Lucerne, which ended at the Lion of Lucerne. Carved into a rock, the sculpture by Bertel Thorvaldsen, honors the men of the Swiss Guard who died while attempting to protect Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution.

 Our companions then departed for Pilatus Mountain. Franco had talked to the people there, and they were concerned about my ability to safely get into the cable car that goes to the top of the mountain, so Nancy and I stayed in town.

 I liked Lucerne because of the terrain, which is much like southwestern Pennsylvania, only more so. We wanted to visit the Kofkirche — the Abbey Court Church. With Nancy pushing me, we started up a hill and kept going up. We got up so high that in time, everything around us was coated in frost, which wasn’t the case when we started.

 I was protected from the cold by a quilt Joyce Carpenter, a former colleague of mine at Ash/Craft, made for me a couple years ago. Nancy relied on the warming effects of physical exertion as she pushed me up the steep grade. Up, up, up we went, finally stopping when the road ended in a T intersection.

 As we wondered whether to go right or left, a jogger came by. We asked for directions, and he sent us back down the hill. With Nancy holding me back, we made our decent and found the church.

 The Kofkirche was the first of many churches we visited. All of them were impressive. Each one left you wondering how the people of the late middle ages and the Renaissance, with only the power of the human body at their disposal, were able to create buildings of such size and such beauty. Just sitting in the churches was a moving experience. It was enough to make an even old doubter recall the words of Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I God.”

 After that, we walked around the city until we worked up an appetite. This was a problem, because, unlike the other countries we visited, the Swiss maintain their own currency. Our stay in Switzerland was less than 24 hours, and it hadn’t seemed worth it to change our Euros or our dollars into Swiss francs.

 We went back to the hotel, but the dining room wasn’t open on Christmas, and the Starbucks in the lobby would accept only Swiss francs. Then we tried the railroad station across the street.

The building had a very modern exterior. Inside, however, it was a European railroad station right out of the movies, with the waiting room being a large open area at the end of the train shed. It was a busy place, people and trains coming and going, and the electronic arrivals/departures board update updated every few minutes. If my count was correct, a dozen trains were scheduled to depart within the hour.

We made our way through the kiosks in the station area and found a sandwich shop that had its prices listed in Swiss francs, British pounds and Euros. We purchased lunch and went back to the warmth of the hotel to eat and wait for the bus, which would take us to Italy.

Sunny Italy

We rode through the Alps that afternoon. It was unbelievably beautiful — the rugged mountains, the snow-capped peaks, the towns, large and small, tucked into the valleys.

 We stopped in Como, Italy for the night, and the next day, Dec. 26, we set off for Florence. With so many Australians and a few Canadians on the bus, there was talk of it being Boxing Day. At last, I could find the answer to the age-old question: What the heck is Boxing Day?

 “I really don’t know,” said Brian, an Aussie. “Nobody’s ever asked me that before.”

 “I think it’s just an excuse for another holiday,” said Helen, Brian’s aunt and the kind of feisty, outspoken older person we all aspire to become.

 En route to Florence, we stopped in Pisa. In the older part of the city, the street along the city wall was rife with vendors offering souvenirs of all sorts. There were the usual trinkets and stuff, some interesting toys for youngsters and some clothing with anatomically correct images of the body parts it was designed to cover.

 When we walked through the opening in the wall, it was like stepping into history. Three hundred years ago, the square must have looked much as it did on that sunny afternoon. The Leaning Tower is a beautiful building. It took my breath away when I saw it, partly because of its beauty, but probably more because I didn’t realize it leaned so much. I’m not quite sure how it manages to remain upright.

 Nancy and I then retreated to a fast-food place outside the wall. Most of the fast-food places in Europe put their American cousins to shame. Many of them have buffets with fresh fruits and vegetables and wide selection of entrees. And, oh, the desserts, wonderful desserts, so luscious and delicious that you never for a moment get homesick for a deep-fried apple pie that contains no actual apples.

 They are a little more expensive than most comparable American establishments, but for the most part we didn’t complain — the quality made it worth it. The 6.90 Euro ($9.87) we were charged for a beer that day did seem exorbitant, though.

 The highlight in Florence, of course, was Michelangelo’s David. Even from the far end of the hall in the Galeria dell’Academia, David catches your eye. It’s hard to believe that something you’ve seen a thousand times in photographs can still be so impressive when you see the real thing.

The Eternal City

Rome was next. In the other cities we visited, our hotels were in older building, some several centuries old, which had been retrofitted with modern amenities. Our Roman accommodations were located well outside the city center in a building no more than five years old. It didn’t fare well against its older rivals.

 The problem was the elevator, which was only slightly larger than a toilet stall. Nancy, the wheelchair and I managed to squeeze into it, but not comfortably and not without difficulty.

 Lest I be accused of taking a too personal view of the facilities, I should note that the only surly person we encountered on the trip was an employee of this hotel. He was the porter. Because of the Lilliputian lift, he could not use a cart to take the bags up to the rooms. He had to take them up one or two at a time. I would have been surly, too.

 That evening, we visited the Trevi Fountain, and the next morning we set out for the Vatican. As our bus made its way through the Roman traffic, our tour guide, a local fellow whose name I forget, told a story of Christianity and capitalism, as he cautioned us not to take pictures of Sistine Chapel.

 It seems that several years ago, the Vatican contracted with a Japanese firm to remove the centuries of accumulated soot and grime from the Sistine Chapel. Part of the deal was that the firm would have exclusive rights to all images of the chapel, including the ceiling painted by Michelangelo. Those wanting pictures would have to buy them.

 The wheelchair proved to be of some benefit again in the Vatican Museum. Because we had to use alternative entrances and exits, we got to explore several hallways that were off limits to our fellow travelers.

 After we finished inside, we took a walk around St. Peter’s Square and found our guide. That’s when the problem started. Because the next item on the agenda was not wheelchair accessible, he gave Nancy and I directions to a rendezvous point. What we had there was a failure to communicate.

 Nancy and I waited for over an hour at what we thought was the appointed spot. The traffic in Rome was fascinating to watch. There is just so much of it. The streets are jammed with cars. Each driver apparently knows where he’s going, but how he gets there is a mystery. Successful driving in Rome must require the proper balance of aggressiveness and patience. You need to be patient enough to wait for your opening and aggressive enough to move when the opening appears. Acting a second too soon, or waiting a second too long can only lead to disaster.

 Once we gave up hope of being reunited with our group, we had to figure out how to get back on own. We had picked up a map at the hotel the night before, but we left it on the bus when we went into the Vatican. Still, Nancy had studied it and realized the Via Aurelia, which was somewhere nearby, would lead us back to the hotel.

 We walked down to the nearest large intersection and found a young man sitting on a motorbike. He obviously didn’t understand us and was more than a little concerned about what these Americans were up to. But when he realized all we wanted were directions, he said, “Ah, Aurelia!” and pointed to the left and around the corner.

 So, we set out for the hotel. We didn’t know it then, but it was a five-mile trek and all uphill, or nearly so. The sidewalks soon proved to be inadequate. They were extremely narrow with telephone poles and lamp poles sprouting from them, so Nancy guided me on to the side of the road, and we became just one more impediment to the smooth flow of traffic in Rome.

 Because of the terrain, the Via Aurelia isn’t quite the arrow-straight thoroughfare so common in the Midwest, and there are a number of confusing intersections where the streets meet at odd angles. At one of them, we stopped at a gas station to get precise directions. The attendant was helpful, and then we asked about the distance to our hotel.

 “Oh, long, long time,” he said.

 Reassured, sort of, we continued on our way. As we climbed a particularly steep hill, a man jumped out of a car, grabbed the wheelchair and pushed me the final 75 yards to the crest of the hill. Then he kissed Nancy on both cheeks and waited for his friend in the car to catch up.

 He had left us in front of a hospital, which probably was where he thought we were headed. In any event, we resumed our trek, and he and his friend gave us the strangest looks when we passed them several times in the slow moving traffic.

 It took an hour and a half for us to make it back, and we spent the rest of the day being asked how we did it. Our companions were amazed when we told them our tale. They couldn’t believe we did it. As if I did anything — all I did was sit there. Nancy did all the work.

 Way back in Paris, Franco had told Nancy and I that we would have to take a bye in Assisi. The church there would be too difficult for us to get to, he said, it would probably be best if I waited in the bus. After he heard the story of our return from the Vatican, however, he was pretty sure Nancy could get me up the hill in Assisi.

 She did. We stopped in Assisi the next morning en route to Venice. It was a steep climb to the church, steeper than the steepest parts of Via Aurelia, and probably steeper than the street in Lucerne. We got to the top, and on the left was the church. On the right, a narrow street went down into the town. Again, I felt like we were stepping into the pages of a history book.

 After going through the upper part of the church, we started back down the hill, only to realize we hadn’t gone into the lower part of the church, where the tomb of St. Francis is located. Nancy turned me around, and as we started back. An Italian gentleman came along and helped Nancy push the wheelchair to the door of the church. He explained to Nancy that it was the least he could do to honor St. Francis.

The tourists in Venice

Venice was our next stop. It really is a city of canals. Really, it is. Our bus dropped us off, and we had to take a water taxi to the hotel.

 The water taxis look like motorboats — stretch models, maybe, they hold 14 passengers, but just motorboats. I didn’t have much trouble stepping down into it, although I was concerned that I might slip in the process and end up in the drink.

 The trip to the hotel was exciting. It took four water taxis to accommodate our group, and Nancy and I were in the second one to leave the dock, or the pier or whatever it’s called. Instead of the canals, the taxis took us to the hotel via the Adriatic Sea, and while on the high seas, to great applause, our taxi overtook the taxi that had left in front of us.

 Now I had to get off the taxi, which meant stepping up. The first step wasn’t bad, nor was the second one, but the third one, the one from the boat to terra firma, was a problem. It was a big step, and the boat kept bouncing up and down. Finally, Joe reached down, got me in a bear hug and pulled me up on to dry land.

 There had to be a better way, and we discovered it the next morning when we went to St. Mark’s Square on the water bus. I didn’t have to leave the wheelchair to get on the water bus. Nancy rolled me on, and when we got to St. Mark’s, she rolled off. It was all remarkably easy.

 We visited St. Mark’s Basilica, and the Doge’s Palace and then did some window-shopping. The arched pedestrian bridges over the canals that you see on postcards are steps, so Nancy and I couldn’t go too far. But there was a ramp on one of the bridges near St. Mark’s, and as Nancy was pushing me up one side, she got help from three Brits, two men and a woman.

 The one man asked where we were from. We told him, and then he inquired: “When are you going to get rid of your leader? What’s his name? Shrub?”

 “Do we have to start this while we’re on holiday?” his wife asked.

 It was all good natured, he just felt the he and his countrymen had done everyone a service by forcing Tony Blair to step down, and now it was America’s turn follow suit. They wished us well, and told us to visit London someday.

 It was still early in the afternoon, so we decided to check out the water bus as an alternative to the water taxi. We boarded the No. 1 and went to the end of the line, the Piazzalle Roma, which was where we were to meet the bus the next morning. When we reached the final stop, we had to get out and wait for a water bus going the other way to get us back to the hotel. 

 Apparently, the one ride was all Nancy and I needed to master the intricacies of commuting in Venice. As we were getting ourselves situated in the water bus for the return trip, a woman across the aisle asked, “Do you live in Venice?”

 No, we told her, we live in Ashtabula, which is equally romantic. She said she was originally from Los Angeles and now lives in Casablanca, where she teaches school. The school used to serve primarily the children of Americans living in Morocco, but now many of the more affluent locals also send their children there.

She said she enjoys her job, although she complained about the propensity of parents to complain to the administrators about the treatment of their little dears, and the administrators’ propensity to listen. Among other things, though, the job gives her the chance to travel; Spain is just a short, inexpensive flight from Casablanca.

 We asked her about living in an Arab country. Morocco, she said, is stable, at least by the standards of the region, and firearms are illegal, although there is the risk of getting robbed at knifepoint.

 “I’m not afraid to walk at night in Casablanca,” she said. “I can’t say that about my hometown.”

 For supper that night, Nancy and I went to a pizzeria near our hotel. We got there about six, only to discover that dinner was served beginning at seven. We could get something to go, or we could wait. We elected to wait and ordered a couple beers. Then we found out we needed a reservation. So, Nancy went back up to the counter and made one.

 Terry and Mary, who were there from Australia, joined us for dinner. Terry was still trying to make sense of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, and I was feeling evermore inadequate as I tried to explain it.

   Mary had something else on her mind. “Everybody thinks we’re British,” she said. “They can’t understand why we don’t talk like Crocodile Dundee. Well, even Crocodile Dundee doesn’t talk like that when he isn’t in a movie.”

On the road again

Up early the next day, Nancy and I left the hotel about six so we could catch the water bus back to the Piazzalle Roma, where we would board the tour coach for the trip to Munich. It was still dark, of course, but we could see boats making deliveries to the businesses along the canal, and the commuters were getting on and off the bus as we made our way along the Grand Canal.

 We got there well ahead of everyone else, but Mario was waiting for us. He helped me get on the bus, turned on the interior lights so I could read and then stepped outside for a cigarette. Nancy walked around the area, checked out some of the local cafes and brought back some coffee.

 A few minutes later, the water taxis arrived, the bus filled up, Mario loaded the luggage and we were back on the road. The funny thing about traveling through the European Community is you’re never quite sure when you’re leaving one country and entering another. If Franco hadn’t said, “OK, now we’re in Austria,” I wouldn’t have known.

 There wasn’t a checkpoint at the border. If there was a big sign that said, “Welcome to Austria,” it wasn’t big enough. And if there were similar signs at the German border and the Netherlands border, I missed them, too. The language on the road signs changed, but that was about all.

 Along the way, we stopped in Innsbruck. The highlight of the stop was a tour of Swarvoski, a noted crystal concern, if you’re a person who takes note of such things. The displays were lovely, but the store was crowded and it was difficult to get around. Nancy and I looked at a few things and went outside to walked around the city, which looked exactly like what you would think a city tucked comfortably into the Alps would look like.

 It was Dec. 31, and Innsbruck was in the process of shutting down for New Year’s Eve, and we ended up eating at McDonald’s, which wasn’t too bad. Then we wondered back to the pickup point, only to discover that it had been moved to across the street. Then, as we waited, Franco talked to Mario by cell phone, and the spot was moved a few blocks up the street.

 As we waited, a light snow began to fall. The Australians thought it was great.

 “When you get to be my age and have never seen snow fall, I think I have a right to be excited,” Donna said.

 Maybe so, but I wasn’t impressed.

 When Mario arrived, he had trouble finding a place to pull in because several other tour buses were parked along the curb. When the driver at the front of the line refused to move to give Mario some room, Mario pulled in front of him at an angle, ensuring that the offending driver could not move until we did.

 A couple of animated conversations followed. First, the other driver registered his objections with Mario. They weren’t loud, but they did a lot of arm waving. Apparently, dissatisfied with Mario’s explanation, the other driver tried to argue his case to Franco. More arm waving ensued. Then we got on the bus and headed to Munich.

A quiet New Years

That evening, we had dinner in the hotel. But it wasn’t just a dinner; it was the mother of all buffets: so much food, so much variety, so many desserts to die for. It would have taken three days to sample it all.

 Our plan had been to go to the Hofbrauhaus that evening, but Franco told us it wasn’t wheelchair accessible. Instead, we walked through the mall located under the hotel, and then went up to the top floor to watch the sporadic fireworks displays.

 Perhaps our companions were just being kind, but the next morning, at the equally unbelievable breakfast buffet, they told us we hadn’t missed much. Apparently, there had been so many revelers reveling at the Hofbrauhaus that it was impossible to revel comfortably. And the pyrotechnics we watched from the hotel window were not part of an organized display.

 The good burghers of Munich purchased their own fireworks and set them off at their leisure. This disturbed some of our friends, who, while taking in the city on foot the previous night, had found themselves too close to some of the spontaneous displays. The evidence was undeniable. Before setting out for Amsterdam, we took a short bus tour of Munich, and every intersection was littered with the spent casings from the fireworks.

The final leg

But the jangled nerves had to be soothed by our cruise up the Rhine that morning. The medieval Germans were big on castles, and they are almost as common along the Rhine valley as drugstores in Ashtabula. And where the conditions are right, the vineyards go from the river to the top of the mountain.

 We passed a series of small towns. At least from the middle of the river, they looked much as they would have looked a century or two or three ago. Several passenger trains snaked through the valley, and we shared the river with a number of barges filled with containers bearing logos that would be familiar to anyone who has waited for CSX or Norfolk Southern trains to clear a crossing.

 Twenty kilometers later, we got back in the bus and by late afternoon, we were in the Netherlands. My mental picture of the Netherlands was of a hopelessly rural country, where the people either tended their herds or used their thumbs to plug dikes. But as we traveled toward Amsterdam, the scene from the highway was much closer to the view along I-271 than anything else we had seen in Europe.

 At every exit, there was a cluster of modern buildings, all glass and stainless steel. Most of them, however, seemed to be automobile dealerships. One Mercedes-Benz dealer was in a building five or six stories tall.

 The next day, we rode through Amsterdam on a canal boat. The guide explained that many of the buildings in the city leaned, which was pretty obvious when you looked closely. Some of the building leaned toward the street, which he said is nothing to worry about; they were designed that way. The problem was with the buildings that leaned to the side. The owners would eventually have to shore them up, and that would be expensive.

 The next stop was the Diamond Factory, an unsuitable museum for one in a wheelchair, so Nancy and I went to the van Gogh Museum, a block or two down the street. Here, too, we might have gotten a better deal than our more ambulatory friends. We weren’t in the museum more than 10 or 15 minutes when a few of them started to filter in, telling us the Diamond Factory had been less than thrilling.

 That afternoon, we traveled to Volendam for our final dinner with the tour group. This trip was through a region of the Netherlands more in tune with my preconceived notion. The cold wind coming off Lake IJssel as we got off the bus in Volendam reminded me of those January nights when I used to walk along the section of Walnut Blvd. where Highland Park had been before it fell into the lake.

 The two women who served us in restaurant that night were attired in traditional Dutch clothing. They weren’t wearing those little white caps with wings, but otherwise, they looked as though they had just stepped off a can of cleanser.

 There was seafood in every course except dessert that night. One of the appetizers was a plate of several kinds of not always easily identifiable fish. I managed to eat and enjoy all of them, having become more gastronomically daring since our first night in Paris. Of course, I didn’t peruse the menu with care, lest it frighten me.

 The next morning, along with Gordon and Lynn, a couple of North Carolinians who were going back on the same flight, we waited in the hotel lobby for the airport limousine. We were glad to be going home, and sad to be leaving. There were only a few souvenirs in our luggage, but Nancy had taken a lot of pictures and we had a lifetime of memories.

  

Notes from the Home X

   According to Richie, I am younger than all but two residents of Covenant Woods. It is often inspiring to go about in a world filled with my elders. Evelyn, Al and Ed are lively octogenarians and nonagenarians. Both the men smile ever so slightly as they watch those around them, as if knowing that much of what the rest of us worry about is stuff and nonsense. But if someone needs a hand, they are there. Yesterday, as I was going to check my mail, a woman in the hallway was struggling to get up from the bench where she was sitting. I asked if she needed help. She told me to maneuver the wheelchair so she could get a hold of it and try to pull herself up. That didn’t work. Then Ed came along, and with the flair of a dashing young man, and with a twinkle in his eye, he took her hands, pulled her up  and walked her to the elevator.

   Evelyn has a limited number of stories, which she tells again and again. But she takes so much care with her appearance, you know she hasn’t lost touch altogether. She complains often, but her complaints are justified – most of the time. 
   I’m not sure how old Lisa is, but she’s old enough to be my mother. I know that because she is planning to go up to Atlanta this weekend to celebrate her son’s sixty-fifth birthday. Lisa has trouble remembering what she did five minutes ago. But when she talks about the past, of her husband, of her children growing up, of her relatives in Austria, she does so with such affection, you know she has had a very, very happy life.

   But there are times when the view from my youthful vantage point is just a little frightening. The other day as I was taking my after-dinner stroll in the wheelchair, an older couple, standing in the middle of a parking lot, was asking a staff person to help them find their car. I didn’t hear much of the conversation, but I heard enough to know they had no idea where they had parked. When I went back inside, the woman who had been assisting them was in the lobby, and I asked her if the couple had found the car. She said they were about ten feet from it when I went by. The couple had apparently pushed the wrong button on the electronic key, and when the door wouldn’t open they assumed it wasn’t their car and got discombobulated. Once the car was located and the doors unlocked, the couple got in and drove off. They must have remembered where they were going and how to get back. At least I haven’t heard any rumors of missing residents.

  

   I left the Pittsburgh area in 1974, but through the miracle of the Internet, the Post-Gazette is never far away. With a lineup that includes Gene Collier, Reg Henry and Samantha Bennett, the P-G leads Cleveland’s Plain Dealer in columnists with a sense of humor by a score of 3-0. This comes to mind because a week or so ago a good friend suggested fishing might be an enjoyable diversion for me. Then, right on cue, Reg Henry wrote about his experience at a fishing camp. It sounded like fun, especially the part about the men sitting around drinking beer, boasting, telling jokes and scratching immodestly. The problem with drinking beer these days is my legs hardly work at all, even when I’m sober, and I need my legs when Nature calls, which she does often when I drink. Of course, laughing at the people drinking beer can be more fun than drinking beer and laughing with them. I’m beginning to think that’s why Dad was such a happy teetotaler.

   And this morning, Samantha Bennett writes that while attending the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in Macon, Georgia, Governor Nathan Deal made her an honorary lieutenant colonel. I’m hurt. I’ve been in the Peach State for almost two months, and Governor Deal has yet to acknowledge my presence or name me so much as an honorary buck private. What’s the deal, Deal?

  

   Fishing and the outdoors kept popping up this week. Penelope, who sometimes pads her thrice-weekly activities announcements with one-paragraph biographies of new residents, called the other day to ask what I did before I came to Covenant Woods. After we talked about what I had done, she suggested something I might want to do: go fishing. She is putting together a day of fishing in early June. I forget the name of the place where this will take place, but she said it’s wheelchair accessible, very pretty, and that there will be a picnic lunch. I told her to sign me up as long as I’m not required to catch my lunch.

   Then there was the writing assignment Suzanne gave us. Suzanne doesn’t really give us assignments; they are writing prompts. In her words, they are assignments “should you choose to do them.” This week one of the suggested assignments was: “Hunting: the weapon, the kill, the camaraderie. What do women have against that? What are women deliberately missing? What gives them the same complex experience?” Well, that’s a story I’ve already written. Sort of. The story includes the weapon, the kill and the camaraderie, but none of the sexual stereotypes. It is the story of Bethany shooting a bear, which appeared in the Star Beacon on July 23, 2008, a few weeks after the bear met its demise. (For those with nothing better to do, and nothing could possibly be better than reading about Bethany and the bear, “The Bear Facts” was posted here on September 22, 2011).

  

   Now back to Penelope’s call. When I told her about my work with mentally retarded adults at Ash/Craft, she said, “No wonder you’re able to put up with those two knuckleheads (Richie and William).” That happens all the time. I tell people what I did for a living, and they tell me I must have superhuman patience and understanding. What these people don’t know is, it’s easier to work with people who are mentally retarded than it is to work with people who act as if they are.

  

   The printer I ordered arrived yesterday. Angie brought it down from the mailroom in a shopping cart. When I saw the packing box, I had visions of the printer that had looked so compact on Amazon being too large for my apartment. Angie set the box on the floor, and I stared at it for five minutes. When I finally opened it, I discovered, much to my relief, that the packing box was large enough for several printers. They had to kill three or four trees, I’m sure, to get all the paper that was stuffed around the printer. Too bad they didn’t use those sheets of plastic with all the little bubbles. I would have had months of fun popping them. Russ is coming over tomorrow to help me set up the printer. He’s a good kid, and I’ll buy him dinner.

Notes from the Home IX

  Thursday morning, the writing class met at as usual at the Kingsville Public Library, and I was there. Not in person, of course, but via Skype. For some reason, they couldn’t see me, but I could see them. I felt like Miss Francis, or whatever her name was, on Romper Room. “And I see Suzanne, and I see Jeanne, and I see Chuck, and I see Katie, and I see Gitta.” They were all Do-Bees, which is what I think Miss Francis called the well-behaved children in the television audience. I was a Do-Bee too, or maybe I wasn’t. They’ll never know; they couldn’t see me.

   Sometimes technology is a pain. But it is a wonderful thing when it allows us to be in the company of people nearly a thousand miles away. The only thing I couldn’t experience firsthand were the goodies Gitta brought to class. I could have had goodies of my own. I planned to have goodies of my own. I even went to the store Thursday morning to get goodies of my own, along with a few necessary items. But when I got back to the apartment, I discovered I had remembered all the needed items and forgotten the goodies. How’s that for misplaced priorities?

  

   Since moving here, I’ve thought a lot about Jesus’ comment to Peter: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” There’s no doubt my body is ready for a place such as Covenant Woods. My mind, though, believes I’m capable of doing all the things I once did. This is always frustrating and, at times, disheartening. Fortunately, I keep getting reminders that life is full of possibilities, and the secret is to concentrate on those things I can do and not worry about the things I can’t. And anyone who thinks I’m in need of a good swift kick in the backside, please feel free to administer it. I might wince a little and go off in a huff, but give me an hour or so, and I’ll be fine, and I’ll thank you for your sage advice.

   James, one of the maintenance men, dispensed some sage advice the other evening. He was sitting on a bench among the trees that edge the parking lot, waiting for the final five minutes of his shift to tick away, and I was making my post-dinner inspection of the grounds.  We got to talking, and pretty soon he was telling me how important it is to keep busy at things you enjoy doing. “My wife and I found that out when the kids starting getting older,”he said.

   James told me about his garden and how big his tomato plants are getting and how they’re covered with buds. “You like tomatoes right off the vine?” he asked. I told him I surely do, and he said he’d bring me some when they ripen.

  

   Now and then at dinner I sit at the same table as Lisa. She was born in Vienna, and married a GI soon after the end of World War II. “The Nazis were gone then,” she says. “But the Russians were trying to move in.” Her husband stayed in the Army and served in both Korea and Vietnam before he retired. He and Lisa must have had a terrific life together. She sometimes looks up from her plate and says to no one in particular, “My husband has been dead for twenty years, and I still miss him.”

   I forget how many grandchildren Lisa has, but she has said enough times for me to remember that she has eight great-grandchildren. To make sure that her kids, their kids and their kids’ kids all get a birthday card in a timely manner, Lisa makes a point of going to the card rack when she’s at the store, and if a card strikes her fancy, she’ll buy it. She gives the cards to her daughter, who lives here in Columbus, and who keeps them and keeps track of all the birthdays. When a birthday approaches, the daughter has Lisa over and they go through the cards so Lisa can decide which one is most fitting for the person about to be a year older.

  

   When I went to check my mail yesterday, a woman I don’t recall seeing here before was also getting her mail. She asked about the T-shirt I was wearing. This T-shirt, like almost every one I own, I told her, was payola, a gift from the organizers of an event I covered for the Star Beacon, this one, the Pyma-Laker 5K. She said she’d never heard of the Star Beacon. I told her that didn’t surprise me. Then she said she used to do some writing for the New York Times. I told her, I had heard of that paper. After her stint with the Times, she went to England. She didn’t say what she did there, but whatever it was it must have brought her into contact with royals, because she said she had to do a lot of bowing. By then, the hallway by the mailboxes was full of people, and she had to be somewhere. Too bad, but maybe we’ll run into each other again and have a chance to talk more. She can regale me with stories of New York and London, and I can entertain her with tales of Ashtabula.

  

   It’s raining this morning, a steady, gentle rain. The kind of pleasant rain you can lose yourself in thought asyou walk in it. Which brings me back to the spirit being willing, but the flesh – or in this case, the electric wheelchair – being ill suited for a walk in the rain.

   It’s cool out, and I’ve opened the sliding door. I can hear the rain as it falls on a small tree nearby, and there are a few birds chirping. Maybe I’ll go over by the door and lose myself in thought there.

    

A Lexeme or Two

In an uneventful life, getting the Word of the Day e-mail from Dictionary.com is an event. Sometimes, however, in the midst of more momentous events, the Word of the Day is overlooked, and a lengthy queue forms in my inbox. And so, the other day, having survived the storms and upheavals of relocation and safely returned to the doldrums of life, I sat down to go through the accumulated lexemes. I had no idea my inbox was full of lexemes until the word – which means a unit of language; a word – appeared in my inbox.

   That explains why the Word of the Day seldom makes me feel exceptionally stupid, and I can go on knowing I’m stupid, but only in a mediocre way. I’d never run across lexeme before, but so what? Chances are I’ll never use it. Although…

    “Oh, Tom, you luscious hunk of manhood, is it true you were a two-time All-American at Stanford and have three PhDs from Harvard and another from Yale?”

   “Yes it is, my sweet.”

   “Really?”

   “I give you my lexeme.”

   See, lexeme is out of place in ordinary conversation.  That does not, however, alter the fact that attractive, libidinous women ordinarily assume that I am a world-class athlete and noted scholar. You have my lexeme on that.

   Which brings to mind another word: hircine. It is an adjective, according to Word of the Day, and its third meaning is “lustful, libidinous.”  But to get to lustful and libidinous, you have to go through the first two meanings: “1, Of, pertaining to, or resembling a goat; 2, having a goatish odor.” If that doesn’t drain all the lustful libidinousness from you, nothing will.

   Some of the words in Word of the Day are words I was better off not knowing; words such as fard, which means to apply cosmetics.

   “Hurry up, honey, we’re going to be late for the dinner.”

   “Give me a minute. I’m almost ready.”

   “For Pete’s sake!. You’ve been farding around for an hour.”

   The words I’ll never use, even in the unlikely event that I remember them, just keep on coming; first there was ephebe. For a word that means “a young man,” ephebe has a definite feminine quality. It’s hard to imagine the Marines looking for a few good ephebes. The person who walks into a biker bar and says, “Wow, look at all the ephebes in their leather jackets,” probably won’t walk out. And the congressman who rises in the House to praise the fine ephebes in his district will be accused by FOX News of trying to advance the gay agenda.

   Brisance means the shattering effect of a high explosive. But, is the average person feeling the effect of a high explosive likely to comment on its brisance? Or are his remarks more apt to begin with “Oh shit” and race downhill from there?

   All these words, according to one Word of the Day e-mail, are selcouth, which means strange or uncommon. And for better or worse, the selcouth words in my vocabulary are outnumbered by the uncouth words.

   Strangely, while the words of the day I don’t know rarely make me feel dumb, the words of the day I do know always make me feel smart. Yesterday’s word was besot, and as soon as I opened the e-mail I was besotted with pride because I was familiar with the word.

   But the real allure of Word of the Day are the days it makes me feel exceptionally brilliant. A recent word was pococurante. As a noun, Word of the Day said pococurante means caring little, indifferent, nonchalant; as an adjective it means a careless or indifferent person. A pococurante, who somehow matched the definitions with the wrong parts of speech, must have been the editor that day. A few days later, the word of the day was luxate, which means to put out of joint or dislocate. All of the Word of the Day words are accompanied by two or three quotations in which the word is used. For luxate, the editors selected a sentence from The Royal Society of London, The Philosophical Transactions and Collections, a name that makes MENSA sound like a bunch of high school dropouts. The sentence read: “But at the same time, he thinks the bone will not remain in it’s place, but luxate itself again.” The Royal Society confused it’s and its, and the people at Word of the Day failed to insert [sic]. But I caught the mistakes.

   And that’s why I look forward to the Word of the Day e-mail each morning

Wish List

Cute, but dateless young Amanda,

While on vacation in Uganda,

Sat and moped on the veranda

Griping to her friend Miranda.

Said she, “I want to meet Santa.”

“And why is that?” asked Miranda.

“Well, because he is a man. Duh!”

Notes from the Home VIII

   For someone like me, who has always had difficulty remembering names, Covenant Woods isn’t a bad place to be. Or maybe it is. The better solution would be for me to pay more attention, to concentrate more when I’m introduced to people. But there are so many people here with memory problems that folks don’t get upset when you ask what their name is for the thirty-seventh time.

   Some moments of forgetfulness, however, are more disappointing than others. Friday at dinner, I was at the same table as Joe, a retired transit dispatcher from New York City. Also at the table was an attractive woman, who is quite young looking by Covenant Woods standards. It seems that about a week ago, when there was a band here playing fifties music, some country and some blues, Joe and the woman danced. Joe didn’t mind at all that the woman didn’t remember his name. But - I think he has got his eye on her - he was very disappointed when the woman said she didn’t remember dancing with him. I noticed they were sitting together at dinner last night, but I didn’t get a chance to ask Joe if she had remembered him from dinner the night before.

  

   Woodruff Farm Road has four lanes and is busy most of the time. But on Sunday morning there is very little traffic, and I keep thinking I should - like the chicken - get to the other side and check out Publix, the supermarket in the plaza over there. To get there, I would have to go down the asphalt path to the plaza where Piggly-Wiggly is and then down the service road. From the end of the service road to the Publix parking lot is a straight shot. When traffic is light, I could dart across Woodruff Farm Road’s four lanes without being a traffic hazard, or a statistic.

   The only thing holding me back is a growing loyalty to Piggly-Wiggly. All the employees are so friendly. Even another customer was helpful this morning. I was in the check-out line, and the woman in front of me, who was watching the cashier ring up her groceries, turned around and took a step toward me. Thinking she was setting off on a mad dash to get something she’d suddenly remembered she’d forgotten. I backed up to let her by. “No,” she said. “I was just going to put your groceries on the counter for you.” And she did. The cashiers all call me “darlin’” or “baby,” which is a little disconcerting. But they call me that after they’ve rung up and bagged my groceries. That’s when they say, “Come around here, darlin’ and I’ll put these bags in your tote.”

   I wonder sometimes if it is a cultural thing. Maybe this Southern hospitality is the same in every store. But I’m enjoying it, and a supermarket by any other name is still just a supermarket, so I keep going to Piggly-Wiggly.

  

   About a week ago, concerned that I wasn’t doing enough writing, I went to a few Internet sites that dispense writing prompts. One of the prompts I made note of was, “Write about something you think needs to be invented.” I didn’t have anything in mind at the time, but a half-hour later I did. That’s when I decided to take a shower. Before getting some clean clothes from the dresser, I emptied the pockets of the shorts I was wearing. I pulled out my wallet, and I pulled out my keys, and then my pockets were empty. And I said, “Where the hell is my cell phone?” I went around the apartment, looking in all the places I’ve found it before when I thought it was lost. It wasn’t in any of them.

   Reluctantly, I picked up the other phone. I did it reluctantly because, a few nights before when I couldn’t find my cell phone, I dialed its number from the other phone. I expected to hear ringing from the closet or maybe from under the pile of stuff that had accumulated on the table. Instead, it rang from my pocket. I was alone in the apartment, no one was there to witness my idiocy, yet I was embarrassed.

   But having searched the apartment thoroughly, the only thing left to do was to call my cell phone, listen for the ring and prepare to be humbled again. However, when I called this time and listened, I didn’t hear a thing. I went in the bathroom and tried again, thinking maybe the cell phone had fallen into the hamper. Not a sound. Well, maybe I dropped it somewhere when I went to get my mail earlier and had stopped in the library. But it wasn’t in either of those places when I went back to look. So, I gathered my courage and went to the front desk and asked if anyone had found a cell phone. “No,” the receptionist said. “But I’ll let you know if someone does.”

   Back in my apartment, still in need of a shower, I went into the bathroom, stood up to take off my shorts, and there on the seat of the wheelchair was my cell phone. I had been sitting on it all along, and now it was blinking to let me know I had a missed call; two missed calls, actually, both from me. If I can break wind with enough gusto to shame myself in a crowded, noisy room, someone should be able to make a phone that rings loud enough and vibrates vigorously enough to be noticed by the 175-pound man sitting on it. That’s what I think needs to be invented.

  

   My brother Jim and sister-in-law Susan came over from Birmingham yesterday. Then Russ, Karen, Jim, Susan and I went to lunch. We took two cars, because I can get in and out of the Aveo, and Jim drives a pickup truck that is well beyond my increasingly meager abilities. Karen drives an Echo, so even without the Aveo there would have been a vehicle I could manage.

   The Aveo, though, is special. It is functioning, noxious-fumes spewing proof that sometimes the best thing that can happen is not getting what you want. Around Memorial Day 2005, I went to Nassief’s on Main Avenue looking for a new car. I liked the Aveos, and I was hoping to get one with standard transmission. I always had better luck maneuvering in the snow with a standard transmission. But there weren’t any on the lot, and I wanted a new car now. It was either get an automatic at Nassief’s or shop around elsewhere. And I hate to shop.

   Buying a car with automatic transmission was a brilliant, brilliant move. In the fall of 2005, my left leg, which had been occasionally obstinate, took on obstinacy as a full-time occupation. How much longer I would have been able to work the clutch pedal is anyone’s guess, but it wouldn’t have been for very long. Instead, I was behind the wheel of my Aveo until December 2010.

   But I digress. I really enjoyed seeing Jim and Susan. As they were leaving, Jim said they’d be back, maybe back so often they’d seem like a bad penny. In times like this, I told him, a man can use all the bad pennies he can get. And that goes for all you other bad pennies, too.

  

Notes from the Home VII

Russ and Karen brought dinner with them when Tuesday. They usually cater Sunday supper, but they pushed it back this week, because Karen wasn’t up to par Sunday. A one-pot meal of bowtie macaroni, spinach, peppers and such was on the menu. It was very good, which wasn’t surprising. The surprising thing was that Russell picked out the recipe. I don’t remember him being much for vegetables beyond peas and corn. Of course, spinach is an acquired taste, and it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve acquired it myself.

   The pressure is on Russ these days. He wants to beef up his resume by adding “illustrator” to it. And already the demands for his illustrious illustrating talents are coming in from across the country, or at least from Idaho and Georgia. The people making the demands are his mother and father.

   Fifteen or twenty years ago – my how time flies – when we lived on Myrtle Avenue, Debbie wrote a children’s book and put it in the drawer.  After she’d been in Idaho a few years, she took a writing class, opened the drawer, dusted off the book, got Russ to do the illustrations and tried to market it. Then the book went back in the drawer until Debbie pulled it out again a few months ago and decided to publish it through Author House. But first, she wants Russ to gussy up the illustrations.

   I, on the other hand, have been happily writing triolets almost from the moment Suzanne, my writing mentor, introduced me to the form. The triolet is an eight-line poem with a rhyme scheme and a few repeating lines. To wit:

   

Bad Computer

My computer needs dissected

For not behaving as it ought.

Since it hates to be corrected,

My computer needs dissected

And most thoroughly inspected

Before it’s taken out and shot.

My computer needs dissected

For not behaving as it ought.

   In the cold, dark, snowy days of January and February 2011, I began writing triolets about animals, creatures such as the Missing Lynx, the Should-I-Otter, Cat-or-Pillars, and the like. I now have forty-one of them. Urged on by Suzanne and the members of the writing class, and prodded by my ego, I’m getting very anxious for the day when the triolets are together in a book with “By Tom Harris; Illustrated by T. Russell Harris” on the cover. To that end, I ask Russ about his progress on those illustrations every chance I get.

   So, Russ, in addition to his job at Barnes & Noble, trying to keep a steady flow of cartoons going out to various publications, and being without a computer for nearly a month – the computer is apparently as important to the modern cartoonist/illustrator as pen and ink – is fending off his parents. “I’ve got about nine projects going,” he told me the other day. How this all will end is a mystery. Russ is the key. He is the exceptionally talented one, and he could give his parents’ efforts a touch of class. Unless, of course, his parents drive him crazy first.

  

   It seems there is always something blocking a portion of the sidewalk when I go to the shopping center at the end of asphalt path through the woods.  When I first got down here, the Kmart was a week or so from closing, and much of the garden department was on the sidewalk. There was of room for those on foot to get by, but not quite enough for me and the wheelchair. Then the store closed, the pallets of top soil disappeared from the sidewalk and a truck from the sign company arrived to remove all evidence that the building had ever been a Kmart, blocking the sidewalk in the process. After the signs were gone, the area around the entrance to the erstwhile Kmart was all a jumble of people loading their trucks with the fixtures and shelving units they’d bought. Yesterday, stock cars were being taken off trailers and placed around the entrance to Piggly-Wiggly.

   None of this is much of an inconvenience; I get off the sidewalk and use the fire lane, unless it is also blocked. Then I have to edge ever closer to the traffic in the parking lot. And I’ve got this thing about parking lots. A few years ago, we went out west. In addition to the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park and many, many other natural wonders, we visited the Air Force Academy. As I was making my way through one of the parking lots there, a black SUV started to back out of a parking space. I stopped. Then the SUV stopped, which I took to be a signal that the driver was waiting for me to go by. Off I went, and then here the SUV came and sideswiped me. “What the hell was that?” the driver yelled. “That was the guy I told you about,” the woman in the back seat, whom I think was probably his mother-in-law, said. The wheelchair left a mark on the SUV, which I hope didn’t wash off, and I’m sure the backseat driver reminded the guy in the driver’s seat of his incompetence at every opportunity for the next month, which is a satisfying thought. The wheelchair wasn’t damaged, but I was left with an abiding fear of parking lots.

   And while I was over at the shopping center earlier this week, I realized why newspapers don’t make money these days. My sole purpose that day was to get a Ledger-Enquirer and a USA Today. I had a pocket full of change, and both papers have a box along the sidewalk. According to the instructions on the USA Today’s box, I was to put the coins in the slot; listen for them to drop: open the door and get a paper. All went well until I got to Step 3: the door refused to open. While there was no Step 4 listed on the box, I assumed it was “push coin return and take money from the tray,” which I did. Then I repeated the first three steps, and after uttering a few imprecations, repeated Step 4, and took my quarters to the Ledger-Enquirer’s box. Different paper; same result. So it was on to Piggly-Wiggly, which doesn’t carry USA Today and charges eighty cents for the Ledger-Enquirer that can be had for seventy-five elsewhere. Don’t ask me why.

  

   I finally have an Internet connection in my room. When I didn’t have a connection in my room, I had to go to the library, which has Wi-Fi. I’m a little concerned that because I no longer have to leave my room to get on the Internet, I won’t get out of the room as much as I should. On the other hand, I’ll be able to Skype to my writing class, and Skype with Beth, Ken and Hayden. That’s something forward to. This morning I got an e-mail from Beth. It was a video of Hayden splashing around in the bathtub.  It made my day.